Videos

This is what it means to be subjected to the force of faith unleashed by a clergy predator. It is not only physically, psychologically, and emotionally devastating, but it is also spiritually annihilating. It is soul-murder.

—Christa Brown

I knew nothing about the world. I wanted so much more for my life than the church was ever going to allow me to have. I wanted to have friends. I wanted to work. I wanted to travel. I wanted to meet new people and experience new things. I was thrust into this world, this whole new world without really understanding anything about it, and I was forced to for a very long time to kind of figure it all out for myself. . . . We were taught that every thought or feeling that we had that wasn't aligned with the church's teachings was the devil speaking in our ear. So even after I left, for years I was filled with guilt and shame and terror. I was trapped inside this prison of my mind, like my body had left the church but huge portions of myself were still there. I realized then, I have to give myself a voice. I have to speak my thoughts and my feelings, and I have to share with the world what I’d been through. If I don’t, there’s really not any reason for me to go on.

—Brooke Arnold, Comedian

A connected and educated populace . . . is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain..

—Steven Pinker

This groundbreaking work can help bring us to a new religious moment in which the world's faith traditions uphold the sanctity of the child. . . . The time is ripe for a new covenant with humanity's children, one by which we respect their personhood and honour their
own hearts and minds.

—Raffi Cavoukian

[W]e must acknowledge that our religious communities have not fully upheld their
obligations to protect our children from violence. Through omission, denial and silence,
we have at times tolerated, perpetuated and ignored the reality of violence against
children in homes, families, institutions and communities, and not actively confronted
the suffering that this violence causes. Even as we have not fully lived up to our
responsibilities in this regard, we believe that religious communities must be part
of the solution to eradicating violence against children, and we commit ourselves
to take leadership in our religious communities and the broader society.